Simon Adebisi
Simon Adebisi is a fictional character played by Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje on the HBO dramatic series Oz. Adebisi serves as one of the main characters in the first four seasons. His character was taken off the show so that Akinnuoye-Agbaje could film the movie The Mummy Returns. Biography Simone Adebisi is serving a life sentance for beheading an undercover cop with a machete. An extremely muscular man, he can physically intimidate many of his fellow inmates. As the leader of the black gang in Oz (dubbed the "Homeboys"), Simon Adebisi is considered one of the prison's most dangerous inmates, and becomes one of the most recognizable characters on the show. He is well known for his trademark tilted hat, a trademark which Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje suggested as inspired by gang members in Nigeria named "Area Boys", where he is from. Adebisi is a native of Nigeria, of the Yoruba people, and speaks with a strong accent, but had been in America for about 15 years prior to his incarceration. Despite being short-tempered and hedonistic, Adebisi is very capable of engineering and executing long-term plans through intellect and manipulation. Character storyline Prisoner #93A234. Convicted May 2, 1993 - Murder in the first degree. Sentence: Life imprisonment without the possibility of parole. Season 1 Adebisi began as a minor character; a lieutenant of Jefferson Keane. Following Keane's execution in Episode 4, Paul Markstrom takes over the Homeboys until Adebisi and Kenny Wangler kill him when it is discovered he is an undercover cop. Adabisi then takes over and partners in the drug trade with . Italian Mob boss Nino Schibetta saw him as the best drug player among the black inmates and respected his leadership skills. Unbeknownst to Schibetta, Adebisi and Ryan O'Reily intend to take over the drug trade and began putting crushed glass into Schibetta's food to slowly kill him. In the Season 1 finale, Adebisi, along with O'Reily, Kareem Said, Miguel Alvarez and Scott Ross, is a leader of the riot in Emerald City. He is taken prisoner by the other inmates, however, when he is incapacitated due to heroin withdrawal. In that episode, it is revealed that Adebisi is serving a sentence of life inprisonment without parole for beheading an undercover cop in 1993, an act that seems to have swept the previous governor out of office and gave Governor James Devlin his opening to reinstate the death penalty. Season 2 Adebisi continues to suffer severe heroin withdrawal while in solitary during the post-riot lockdown. However, he is able to maintain control of the Homeboys when the renovated Em City reopens. Nino Schibetta's son Peter comes to Oz and learns that Adebisi is responsible for the death of his father Nino, and is himself poisoned by Adebisi. Schibetta swears revenge and tries to kill Adebisi with help from Chucky Pancamo. Adebisi is able to defend himself against the two and knocks out Pancamo and then brutally rapes the semi-conscious Schibetta. As a result, Schibetta, traumatized by the rape, begins losing his mind and is transferred to the psych ward. However, two distractions held Adebisi's attention: first, his crush on death row inmate Shirley Bellinger, who flirts with him through notes before rejecting him upon discovering that he is black. Secondly, his heroin addiction is out of control. The Italian Mob, seeking revenge for Schibetta's rape, takes advantage of this when new inmate Antonio Nappa gets Adebisi put into drug rehab through his staff connections. Adebisi is deposed as the head of the Homeboys and cut out of the drug trade through the help of Nappa's former friends. Another Nigerian Yoruba prisoner, an elderly man named Kipekemie Jara, comes to Oz, and begins to rehabilitate Adebisi, but at the same time the stress of the change brings on schizofrenic visions and severe psychosis. The Italians and the blacks consider Jara a threat, so they kill him. The shock and trauma of the event triggers a nervous breakdown in Adebisi and he is moved to the psych ward, placed in a cell right next to Peter Schibetta. Season 3 Adebisi comes out of the psych ward pretending to be a changed man. To prove he is sane, he defends Peter Schibetta from an attacker in the psych ward. This convinces Antonio Nappa that a potential change in heart from Adebisi could prove useful for the Italian mobsters. This is all a ploy, however, as Adebisi takes a job in the AIDS ward as a means of obtaining blood from AIDS patient Robbie Gerth to prick Nappa undetected with an HIV-infected needle. When Dr. Nathan confirms that Nappa is HIV-positive, he is sent to the AIDS ward, and Chucky Pancamo assumes leadership among the Italians. From here Adebisi gets ready to take control of the Homeboys once again. Meanwhile, Kenny Wangler is leading the Homeboys, who no longer trust Adebisi. Adebisi approaches Pancamo about becoming partners in the drug trade. Pancamo initially refuses because he is still angered about the beating Adebisi gave him and Schibetta. However, when Adebisi points out that he could be a strong ally, Pancamo agrees to work with him as long as gets rid of Wangler. Adebisi then shows his sincerity with a plot to depose current black gang member Wangler by burning the skin of Wangler's allies, Poet and Junior Pierce, while Wangler is away at a funeral. When Wangler arrives back in Oz he is locked in as Adebisi's cellmate. Sharing a cell with Wangler, Adebisi practices various African "warrior training" activities such as hog tying Wangler naked. Adebisi goes one further with Wangler forcing him to accuse Unit Manager Tim McManus of sexual harrasment. The claim hurt McManus, as he is already facing a sexual harassment suit from Claire Howell, putting McManus's credibility at further risk. Adebisi begins to formulate a plan to take over Emerald City and make it "all black." The first step is to convince the impressionable Correctional Officer Clayton Hughes to help his Black American counterparts behind bars as opposed to keeping them locked in. Adebisi tells him that his father had also died in Oz and then convinces Hughes that a white inmate murdered his father. Hughes, after seeing a few white officers make racist statements, starts accusing other black staff members, including Warden Leo Glynn, of betraying their own people and working for an oppressive white-run system. Adebisi's second step involved rallying the Black inmates as a means of taking over the prison. He engineers a plan which results in the prison guards throwing Augustus Hill in the hole. He exploits the perceived racism of the white officers in order to incense the black inmates to riot. Despite opposition from Muslim inmate Kareem Said, the black inmates led by Adebisi begin shouting "Set Hill Free" and start physically confronting both the White inmates and correctional officers. Glynn fearing for a riot locks Oz down into the new millennium and fires Hughes for being sympathetic to Adebisi's cause. Hughes however leaves Adebisi with a gun on his last day of work as New Year's Eve approaches. Season 4 Upon the end of the lockdown Adebisi creates a tense situation by holding the smuggled gun in his cell. He then manipulates Warden Glynn to let Poet, Pierce, and Wangler back into Em City claiming that the racial situation will rest easier getting them back. When Wangler asks why Adebisi isn't using the gun, he claims that their goal to get a black man to run Emerald City will be accomplished better if another inmate uses the gun. Adebisi then notices that the three of them led by Wangler harass and bully a new white inmate, a Frenchman named Guillaume Tarrant, who is a solitary loner unfit to handle the stress of prison life. Intending to eliminate Wrangler, Adebisi leaves the gun under Tarrant's mattress. The next time Wangler tries to bully Tarrant, Tarrant pulls the gun and kills him, his friend Junior Pierce, Lou Rath, and officer Joseph Howard, all four of whom are black before turning the weapon on himself. With four blacks including one correctional officer dead at the hands of a white inmate, Adebisi's goals are accomplished and his plan is set in motion as Glynn fires McManus for overlooking the gun smuggling incident. Raoul Hernandez informs on him, convinced that the Latinos will move to aid the Whites. Hernandez tells Glynn that Adebisi used the gun to stir up racial tension and that it was given to him by Hughes. Adebisi and Pancamo agree that it is time for Hernandez to die, and use new inmate Enrique Morales to kill Hernandez and take his position as El Norte's gang leader. Meanwhile, a new inmate named Desmond Mobay, who is supposedly Jamaican, wants in with the gangsters. Mobay is actually a narcotics detective named Johnny Basil who is sent in to bust the drug trade in Emerald City. Adebisi is suspicous and opposes having Mobay join as a member their crew. But Mobay comes though and passes every initiation test successfully, eventually gaining their confidence. Over the course of the season Adebisi, with the help of Zahir Arif, persuades outside community leaders to pressure Glynn into hiring a black man to replace McManus. Glynn is running for Lieutenant Governor, and sees that hiring a black man to run Em City is likely to gain him more support from the regisitered African American voters. Eventually, Glynn does indeed hire a black man for the job named Martin Querns. Querns, himself an ex-drug dealer, is told to rid Emerald City of violence and racial tension. Querns tells the inmates that they sell and use drugs freely as long as there is no violence. Head guard Sean Murphy, an ardent supporter of McManus, is appalled by Querns' system, especially because it makes Adebisi, Pancamo, and Morales the trustees. Murphy questions Querns' motive in transferring all of the Aryan and Biker inmates out of Em City. Querns fires Murphy and instates a black officer Travis Smith as the head of Emerald City. Querns later recommends that Glynn transfer all of the guards loyal to Sean Murphy out of Em City. Glynn allows Querns to transfer all of the white guards with the exception of Claire Howell, who hates McManus. All of the new guards transferred into Em City are black, as are all of the new inmates. However, none of these inmates are Muslim. This angers Arif, who had helped Adebisi get a black man to run Emerald City in the first place. The new inmates are also all loyal to Adebisi who now becomes the most powerful and influential inmate in the prison, and is given free rein by Querns as long as he suppressed violent incidents. Adebisi now has the freedom to satisfy all his vices, installing a curtain in his cell and creating his own version of "paradise", although he could not escape the fact that he was still in prison. In time, the Christian and gay gangs, both predominantly white, are replaced by black inmates, and soon the Italian and Latino inmates are deprived of the drug trade. When these two groups are sent to Unit B, two of Adebisi's lieutenants, Poet and Supreme Allah, are named trustees to replace Pancamo and Morales. At the same time, two of the very few white inmates left in Em City, Chris Keller and Ryan O'Reily, decide to work together to bring Adebisi and Querns down. Keller murders inmates Nate Shemin and Mondo Browne, and he and frames Supreme Allah, Adebisi's lieutenant. This causes Warden Glynn to began to mistrust Querns, who in turn begins to mistrust Adebisi, who tries to force a confession out of his lieutenant and various others. Adebisi is rattled by these events and begins to distrust his own men. Said, the re-instated leader of the Muslims, and Vernon Schillinger, leader of the Aryan Brotherhood, are greatly concerned about the effects of Adebisi's leadership in Em City under Querns. Said believes that Emerald City is rapidly becoming an inferno in which black inmates are being mentally poisoned, while Schillinger fears that the black "ghetto" that Querns and Adebisi have created in Em City will eventually spread into every other unit in Oz. Taking of Adebisi's distrust of his men is light of the murders, Said pretends to join forces with Adebisi with the covert intention of bringing him down. Said learns of Adebisi's video recordings of drug parties held in his cell, and resolves to find a way to supply Glynn with this damning evidence of Querns' misconduct, the warden will fire Querns and have Adebisi transferred into general population. Adebisi accepts Said's request to move into his cell and voluntarily gives him a video tape to "test his loyalty." However, Said's loyalty is called into question after fellow Homeboy Leroy Tidd learns of the minister's plan to destroy Adebisi. Eventually the tape finds its way to the warden and Querns is immediately fired. When McManus is reinstated as unit manager of Em City, he announces Adebisi's transfer from Emerald City. Adebisi is enraged and storms into his cell to kill Said with a knife. The two of them struggle and the altercation ends with Said killing Adebisi in self-defense. Murders committed *'Unnamed Undercover Cop': Chopped in the head with a samurai sword (1993) *'Nino Schibetta': With Ryan O'Reily, placed ground up glass in his meals everyday until he died of internal hemorrhaging. (1997) Murders connected *'Kenny Wangler': Orchestrated his murder by supplying his killer with the murder weapon. (2000) *'Junior Pierce': Orchestrated his murder by supplying his killer with the murder weapon. (2000) *'Lou Rath': Orchestrated his murder by supplying his killer with the murder weapon. (2000) *'Joseph Howard': Orchestrated his murder by supplying his killer with the murder weapon. (2000) Category:Characters Category:Homeboys Category:Deceased Characters